You can’t buy happiness and good health, but you can buy raw cacao powder. They’re basically the same thing.
Cacao is dubbed as the food of the Gods for its bittersweet burst of flavour and wide range of health benefits that qualify it as superfood. And while chocolate has long been demonized as a fattening delight, raw cacao works in an opposite direction and bring forth wellness.
Natural chocolate comes from cacao pods that house about 60 cacao seeds. These pods are opened to extract the seeds. These will then undergo chemical-free fermentation and sun drying. After a week or two, raw cacao beans are ready to be made into powder though a cold-processing process.
Fats in the form of cacao butter are then removed to make it dissolvable in water. Raw cacao can then be ready to be made into hot chocolate.
It is imperative to make sure that the powder does not come from roasted beans to form cocoa which was later mixed with white sugar and fats. The heat during the roasting process decreases the amount of antioxidants contained in cacao, thereby lowering the powerful health benefits of the beans.
The rule of thumb is pretty simple. Cacao is good,Cocoais not.
Gains from Raw Cacao Powder
Did you know that Cacao is the only food that contains the neurotransmitter, Anandamide, that can give a feeling of happiness? And it is the only natural source of N- linoleoylethanolamine that counters the effect of Anandamide to spare you from palpitations and being hyper?
Consuming raw cacao powder can then give you the ideal feeling of “high” minus the side effects.
More so, the unprocessed powder contains Phenethylamine which is popularly coined to as the love molecule. With this said, it is easy to infer that drinking hot chocolate from raw cacao powder is the best way to start and end the day.
More than this, cacao powder also works its magic by being satisfactory to the sweet tooth while lowering the risk of diabetes. This is a bit ironic but true. In 2010, a study conducted among patients with type 2 diabetes revealed that the powder lowered their cholesterol level and mended some damages in their blood vessels.
A separate research also showed that consuming at least five glasses of cacao powder drink daily significant lowers the rates of heart disease and hypertension. This is because the powder contains good levels of magnesium that can strengthen cardiovascular muscles while promoting improved digestion, mental alertness, solid bones and sounder mental health.
More importantly, the powder has fourteen times more antioxidants than red wine; and twenty one times more than that of green tea. Battling out free radicals is therefore a lot easier when you regularly consume cacao. As such, you can:
– be free from atherosclerosis
– look younger
– have glowing skin
– be safe from cancer
– work more efficiently as flavonoids boost blood circulation and lower blood pressure
– feel happier with elevated mood (thanks to serotonin and endorphin-inducing properties of the cacao powder)
– have higher levels of energy
Sure enough, being healthy has never been this sweet.